Letters to the editor: June 4, 2017

It seems that the cost of health care always seems to involve tort reform related to patients who were exposed to malpractice and incompetent doctors and hospitals.

The question includes what has the medical profession done to remove such doctors from the practice of medicine? What are the statistics on how many doctors were barred from practicing medicine or suspended for more than a year?

I am not aware of any such events. Enlighten me. Bar associations have barred lawyers from practicing law who violated their responsibilities. Why aren't doctors being barred?

It’s not tort reform (damages paid to a patient for incompetent and negligent doctors and hospitals), it’s the medical profession’s lack of responsibility to eliminate the cause of the problem. It's not lawyers, not patients, but incompetent doctors and bad hospital procedures.

Ray Eifler, Bonita Springs

Buy reporter some glasses

How often have we heard the liberal left rebuke political violence, like, for example, bashing windows, throwing rocks, setting fires, mob rebellion, etc.? Not often, if ever.

Then a right-wing political candidate in Montana confronts a pushy reporter, who has been warned to back off, and pushes said reporter to the floor in an act of frustration. According to the mainstream media, the world is now coming to an end. Is this hypocritical or what?

However, I do think the candidate should buy the reporter a new pair of glasses.

Marilyn Doherty, Naples

Letter among the worst

This is a response to Jim Reece and any others who agree with his letter of May 26, in which he appeared to bemoan the removal of the Confederate flag and monuments from major U.S. cities.

Reece, do you have any idea of the pain and anguish caused by physical reminders of the Confederacy and of this country's hateful enslavement of millions of human beings?

Your letter was nothing more than an excuse to spew racial hatred. I have heard and read many racist remarks through the years, but Reece, your letter was one of the worst.

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Actions speak louder than words. Obamacare signed up 11 million Americans for health care and 12 Million for Medicaid. Last time I checked, there are over 300 million people in our country. Talk about "tyranny of the minority."

A recent court case involves us taxpayers reimbursing the insurance companies for their "losses" under Obamacare mandated by the former president, even though Congress only has the authority to expend funds and they never agreed to it.

Obama consistently got away with circumventing the Constitution and the media was complicit by not exposing these infractions.

Roy Hyman, Estero

No more invitations for Boehner

I am appalled that former Republican Rep. John Boehner would have the audacity to call Donald Trump’s presidency a disaster. It is not Trump, it is Boehner and the wishy-washy brand of conservatism that he demonstrated as speaker of the House that is a disaster.

Despite the organized, crazed, malicious and depraved efforts of the party of former President Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton, Trump continues to move forward to restore a sense of common decency and respect for law and order.

Boehner, as a part-time Marco Island resident, gets a lot of local press, but he does nothing for the community other than making a few celebrity appearances for the Caxambas Republican Club. As a member of that club, I hope he gets no further invitations, since he has no reluctance to join the raucous chorus of radical leftists like Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Maxine Waters at a time when true moral conservatives need to pull together and honor and support our president.

Phares Heindl, Marco Island

Celebrate all Americans

In response to the letter to the editor from Judith Gore, who seems to resent Naples Daily News coverage of the celebration of Haitian Flag Day at Immokalee High School: would you like to get rid of the coverage of St. Patrick’s Day celebrations too?

To celebrate Memorial Day, the local schools have a day off to honor the people who died in our wars. What could be a better celebration than that? And the Naples Daily News coverage of Memorial Day is quite extensive.

Gore seems to think that the schools will not be permitted to celebrate Memorial Day. Not only will the schools celebrate Memorial Day as a holiday by having a day off, they will remember their Immokalee High School graduate, Linda L. Pierre, an American-Haitian herself, who was killed in Afghanistan a few years ago.

No matter what our heritage, we are all Americans, Ms. Gore. Let’s celebrate that and not marginalize other nationalities.

Phyllis Andrews, Naples

Longer walks might help

There she goes again. Just when you thought she retired to long solitary walks in the woods, Hillary Clinton is once again engaging in political doublespeak.

During her commencement address at Wellesley College, she said, "When people in power invent their own facts and attack those who question them it can mark the beginning of the end of a free society. This is not hyperbole. It is what authoritarian regimes throughout history have done. They attempt to control reality, not just our laws and our rights and our budgets but our thoughts and beliefs."

If she doesn't recognize her own hypocrisy in what she said, then she is either disingenuous or delusional. Maybe longer walks in the woods would help.

Ralph Cicirelli, Naples

Learn from the past

I wanted to respond to Jim Reece's letter to the editor published May 26.

As a member of the generation born in the early 1950s, with a history degree, I think he nailed it. As Americans, we should accept the facts whether good, bad or ugly. You can't change history by taking down Confederate flags, statues of Robert E. Lee and other vestiges of the Civil War era for political reasons.

The Civil War was not started because of the slavery issue, but over states’ rights. Emancipation took place well into the war. So, by eliminating the bad parts of history, everything will be good? While we are at it, let’s delete the Vietnam War and our present debacle in the Middle East.

The only way to make it good is to learn from our past, not hide from it, and go forward as better people.

Don Stoecklein, Naples

Obamacare, spending, education

Many are screaming at Republicans over canceling Obamacare. Most of these folks do not have a clue as to what is happening with Obamacare.

What Republicans should do is just repeal the individual and employer mandate and let the thing die on its own. The pre-existing condition insurance issue is a real exercise in confusion. First of all, if insurance companies are forced to sell insurance to people with pre-existing conditions at the same cost as to others, then it is not insurance, it is welfare.

What Obamacare does is make the insurance companies welfare providers and tax collectors. The welfare part is providing the policy at the same price to all as to those without pre-existing conditions. The tax collector part is raising the cost to all without pre-existing conditions to cover the cost of policyholders with pre-existing conditions. The only good news is that insurance companies can decide to opt off this nonsense and many have.

The many have to pay for the few and that is why premiums and deductibles have risen a bunch.

Our country has a spending problem and Obamacare only makes it worse. When Republicans were last in charge, they were terrible. They increased the size of government, increased spending, increased the deficit, increased the debt and started two wars. The result was former President Barack Obama.

If the Republicans do not address the size and scope of government and do something about spending, then I am sure we will have another Democrat in the White House and perhaps Democratic control of one branch of Congress.

I suggest eliminating the U.S. Department of Education. States should handle education issues.

E.R.Russell, Naples

Remarkable performance

The Naples Philharmonic Youth Jazz Orchestra rocked the Daniels Pavilion at Artis‐- Naples on May 24.

After touring the operatic world for 35 years, truthfully I am a "classical music" person. For 58 years, my husband, Rob Davidson, has endured my quick finger flipping the Sirius jazz station to the classical setting.

The house was packed with an intergenerational bunch of toe‐tapping, finger-snapping, head-bobbing folks. The stage, framed in an awesome decoration with subtle lighting changes, was packed with 23 middle school and high school students who came ready to play.

“One, two, one, two, three, four,” called out leader Dan Miller, internationally known for his "hot" trumpet. Two other artists of renown, groovy Glenn Basham, more often seen as dignified concertmaster of the Naples Philharmonic, and Lew Del Gatto, with blazing tenor sax in hand, joined talented students with their own “riffs.” Maestro Miller provided entertaining stories of the Neil Hefti selections, which were not as familiar to me as Gustav Mahler’s. I recognized the name "Ellington," whose "charts" were also featured. (See, I'm even learning a new vocabulary!)

Everyone got a chance to “improvise,” a term I understand from classical cadenzas! The students’ various styles would have sent Rossini scrambling for his pen.

My choice of the evening was “Lil Darlin,” with sumptuous chords connected by stretched-out legato phrases. It’s not easy to play lento! Bravo to Mclaine Milfort for his vocal, “I Like the Sunrise.”

Thank you, Kathleen van Bergen, David Filner and Bonnie Thayer and their support crew.